My Roadblock is Made of Cheese
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012So. My resolutions-goals-plans-whatever get a resounding “meh” right now.
My two big setbacks last week were discovering my BMI still puts me firmly in the “overweight” category and trying to order a dress online that required me to take my measurements, after which I promptly declared my tape measure defective and cried into a bag of candy.
I don’t know why the BMI thing made me so upset. BMI is stupid. I don’t even BELIEVE in BMI as a scale of health. I bet you $100 that when I get to the doctor on Thursday I am declared insanely healthy and my weight isn’t even mentioned. And yet when I saw a link on some website to calculate my BMI I clicked through and did it. Now I feel like all the weight I’ve lost up until this point doesn’t even count because I’m still OVERWEIGHT.
But then there’s the trouble with taking my measurements. I can’t say I don’t believe in inches. It’s one thing to know what size pants I wear and quite another to know how wide around I am in concrete numbers. I can scoff at arbitrary, meaningless clothing sizes easily – I’m swimming in my only pair of dress pants but an old sundress in the SAME SIZE won’t even zip halfway – but an inch is an inch is an inch. (Of course, then I compare the number showing on the tape measure to the ones on the size chart online and oh look, that website thinks I’m a fatty too. Congrats, Chubby, here are the ugly tunics and mom-jeans we’ve decided are the only things we approve for you. Go sit in a corner and feel shamed.)
The truth is no matter how unhappy these stupid numbers make me I have almost reached my deprivation-capacity. I am willing to snack on grapes instead of chips. I am not willing to eat lettuce without any dressing. I am willing to switch to low-fat cheese. I am not willing to give up all dairy. I am willing to watch my portions. I am not willing to feel hungry all the time. I am willing to work out more days a week if it means I can have a burger on the weekends. I am not willing to get up at 4 am to do The 30 Day Shred and STILL skip the burgers.
I consider it a quality of life issue. You know that saying “Nothing tastes as good as thing feels?” Whoever made that up had never eaten REALLY GOOD FOOD.
All those super clean eating raw unprocessed juicing diets might be amazing and everyone always loses a ton of weight but they won’t work for someone who LOATHS them with every fiber of her being. Up to this point I’ve been able to balance my choices and still end up on the winning (losing) side. Having the points from Weight Watches makes it math instead of guessing and I like the structure AND the flexibility. But once I wean Caroline (and the end is near) my body isn’t going to need an extra milk-making calories and I suspect I’ll have to drop dessert AND dairy to stay under my allotted points. Bless me grilled cheesus, I am just not sure I can do it.
The silliest part of all of this is I am still losing weight. My doubts are just SPECULATION about my FUTURE weight loss and depression over the total number of pounds I have to go before I am in the “normal for my height” range. I think I need a smaller goal – teeny tiny, like ONE POUND LOST – next week and a real reward for reaching it. It just probably shouldn’t be cheese.